Although only a handful of works associated with Christmas survives from early Tudor England, this significant celebration inspired some of the most intricate and extravagant polyphony of the period. Our programme opens with the Windsor-based composer Walter Lambe’s antiphon Nesciens mater, a work celebrating Mary as mother of the infant Christ, preserved in the lavishly illuminated Eton Choirbook. This is followed by a selection of five movements from three different Masses for various feast days: Gaudete in Domino from the Third Sunday of Advent by Thomas Packe, a little-known composer associated with Exeter Cathedral; the Mass for St Stephen’s Day (26 Dec) by Nicholas Ludford, undoubtedly composed for St Stephen’s, Westminster, where Ludford spent much of his career; and Tecum principium for Christmas Day by Robert Fayrfax, a longtime gentleman of the Chapel Royal and favoured composer of both Henry VII and Henry VIII. These movements will be interspersed with their plainsong propers drawn from early sixteenth-century English manuscripts. At the close of the programme, listen for Fayrfax’s majestic setting of the Agnus Dei’s final petition for peace, ‘dona nobis pacem’.

 

Nick Walters